6 ms·

Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

69 points by js2 6y ago

black6 6y ago
It's a business, like any other--it just sells something that cannot be redeemed until after death. Let's pull back tax benefits for religious institutions and treat them the same as the rest.
- bilekas 6y ago
  It's not just like any other though, it already recieves huge tax relief. Not to mention the esitmated worth in 2018 at least was 30 Billion $ > The Internal Revenue Service automatically considers churches exempt. The reasoning behind making churches tax-exempt and unburdened by IRS procedures stems from a First Amendment-based concern to prevent government involvement with religion. So it's okay not to pay taxes, but it can petition to recieve some. Doesn't add up.
  - abetusk 6y ago
    This is some contorted logic. "We will not privilege religion, so we will give a privileged tax exempt status to religion". Ha, nice, the Satanic Temple is also tax exempt [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple
    - klyrs 6y ago
      I've been thinking a lot about the Satanic Temple recently. The supreme court has been ferociously eroding the separation of church and state lately. I wonder how they, and the public, would respond to public funding for a Satanic charter school that openly discriminated against heterosexual teachers and forced heterosexual students to undergo gay conversion therapy... Edit: to be clear, I don't think that it would be a good to do. But for all the fearmongering about the "gay agenda" to make your kids gay, there's a well-documented "straight agenda" that results in a high rate of suicide (and very few enduring conversions) of its victims. If we are equal in the eyes of the law, zero or both must be valid.
      - true_religion 6y ago
        I’m not against a gay only school. It doesn’t sound too dissimilar to male or female only schools, which only seek to employ teachers of the same gender.
  - 29_29 6y ago
    They aren't given tax relief. They aren't paying the thief like the rest of us.
    - jt94mf90d 6y ago
      how would society work if the vast majority of working people dont contribute to maintence?
      - User23 6y ago
        Evidently it works just fine since the bottom 60% of the population runs a surplus against the government since at least 2012[1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-...
      - 29_29 6y ago
        maintenance is one thing. We have an empire, welfare state, huge entitlements and red ink of pension obligations as far as the eye can see. As soon as people fail, they look to the government to bail them out.
  - peterxpark 6y ago
    By that logic non-profits also should not have qualified to receive relief funds since the 501c3s don't pay taxes either but do serve a social good.
  - pnw_hazor 6y ago
    US churches have some exceptions related to religion freedom, but otherwise they are conventional non-profit corporations.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
It’s not a monolithic financial institution in the U.S. It’s a large array of individually operating entities providing local food banks etc.
- valuearb 6y ago
  It's a long running MLM selling "eternal salvation" and spending a tiny percentage of it's revenues on charity for PR cover.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    While not given as a percentage of revenue, this post estimates the Catholic Church's charity as anything but 'tiny': https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/6ogy4p/source_for_the_church_being_the_largest/dkhrydq/?st=1Z141Z3&sh=d663c0a2 https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/6ogy4p/source_...
    - exclusiv 6y ago
      People also forget the huge network of Catholics who contribute their own personal time for the benefit of the local communities (and also the non-Catholics they activate with their local events). It would be hard to quantify, but in the analysis you posted that's not included.
12xo 6y ago
Tax them.
danso 6y ago
The news peg for this particular story (i.e. why the Catholic Church and not all denominations) is ostensibly the Church's ongoing legal battle and settlements re: clergy sexual abuse, but also the fact that the church's lobbying arm successfully argued an exception for religious organizations to not be disqualified under the rule's dictate "that only businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including at all subsidiaries, are eligible.": > The Catholic News Service reported that the bishops’ conference and several major Catholic nonprofit agencies worked throughout the week of March 30 to ensure that the “unique nature of the entities would not make them ineligible for the program” because of how SBA defines a “small” business. Those conversations came just days after President Trump signed the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which included the Paycheck Protection Program. > In addition, federal records show the Los Angeles archdiocese, whose leader heads the bishops’ conference, paid $20,000 to lobby the U.S. Senate and House on “eligibility for non-profits” under the CARES Act. The records also show that Catholic Charities USA, a social service arm of the church with member agencies in dioceses across the country, paid another $30,000 to lobby on the act and other issues. Also, the Catholic Church is just fundamentally a more hierarchical and unified institution compared to other denominations. Sure, other denominations have dioceses and bishops, but not as rigidly structured as Catholicism, e.g. cardinals who work directly with the Pope.
- voisin 6y ago
  $50k in lobbying for $1.4B (possibly $3.5B)? Seems like a hell of a ROI. I’ve never understood why elected officials seem willing to acquiesce to huge pork barrel projects for such little $$ in lobbying. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Lobbying Dollars”?
  - exclusiv 6y ago
    Yeah it's crazy but I think the short answer is - they aren't giving up their money.
    - voisin 6y ago
      In a competitive market, wouldn’t you expect the costs and benefits to converge?
mnm1 6y ago
I'm not surprised they made an exception to allow the church to gain funds despite having more than 500 employees but did not require companies with more than 500 employees to provide sick leave for corona. Classic corruption. Send the funds to our rich rapist (proven not alleged in this case) friends while Americans are starving and getting evicted in the streets while sick because they have no sick days or financial support. Many people are still waiting for their first unemployment check from March but not to worry, the church won't go out of business and little kids will continue to be raped by priests. We have our priorities straight in America. Clearly raping kids is more important than feeding, sheltering, or providing sick leave for ordinary Americans. Message received loud and clear.
- _--___-___ 6y ago
  www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf Employees of the US public school system abuse several orders of magnitude more children than the global Catholic clergy. Maybe I shouldn't be taxed to pay the rapist employees of a system my family and I don't benefit from before we start talking about the churches.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
I want to avoid taxes but also get government support too. Who do I need to lobby and how much will it take?
- sushid 6y ago
  First, create a religion.
  - annoyingnoob 6y ago
    I find the L Ron Hubbard path distasteful. But I see your point. I suppose any non-profit could work instead.
  - felideon 6y ago
    It's easier than that. Pretty much anyone with charisma and public speaking skills can start a non-denominational "Christian" church.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Start any charity?
noscrewstoyous 6y ago
Well, time to tax.
jawns 6y ago
I'm a Catholic, and although I believe in my church's doctrine, I don't always come to the defense of my church's leaders. Here's how I see this: Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that when public funds (e.g. grants, aid, forgivable loans) are made generally available to any organization that meets certain neutral criteria, a religious organization that meets the criteria cannot be excluded merely because it is religious. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires the government to be impartial when it comes to religion, showing no preference toward any particular faith, or toward religious believers in general. But that doesn't mean that religious organizations must be barred from funding that is otherwise generally available. So, assuming the Catholic parishes, dioceses, and organizations satisfied same the criteria for the PPP loans as everybody else, I don't think there's a "separation of church and state" issue here. Another consideration: What happens if they were ineligible to participate in the PPP. They would likely be forced to furlough or lay off employees. Because churches don't pay into states' unemployment programs, those employees would not be eligible to collect unemployment insurance (or the federal government's additional unemployment aid), which would put them in pretty bad shape. I happen to think that churches SHOULD pay into unemployment programs or provide similar unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, but that's not the reality right now. And so having churches participate in the PPP is an available way for the government to look after people who happen to work for religious employers. As for some of the more controversial details -- lobbying for special classification with regard to employee size restrictions -- I would not be surprised if the Church were in the wrong there, although it's certainly true that the Church has an organizational structure that far predates and doesn't map cleanly to U.S. corporate structures.
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  The issue that I have is that the Catholic Church has enormous assets, something like 30 billion in net worth globally. I'm feeling like the church had options beyond lobbying for relief.
  - jawns 6y ago
    Those assets are, in large part, the church buildings themselves. They are not liquid assets. Indeed, they are even more illiquid than most other real estate, because the market for church buildings, all of which are constructed to meet the needs and functions of a particular faith, is quite limited. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the Catholic Church has vast piles of money sitting around in a Scrooge McDuck-style money bin. Whereas if you look at the balance sheets of your average Catholic parish or diocese, you'll see that their budgets are relatively modest, they sometimes operate in the red, and to the extent that they have liquid assets, they're generally set aside to fulfill pension obligations. Even at the Vatican level, the annual operating budget is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized U.S. city, and expenses tend to be fairly close to income. The art in its museums is often mistakenly viewed as if it could be sold off like gold or diamonds, but the Vatican actually acts more as a conservator than an owner of the pieces. It does not consider itself at liberty to sell the art, because it was entrusted to the Vatican's care under the expectation that it would be perpetually maintained. In that sense, the art truly is priceless; it can't be sold.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
In this case maybe the loans should not convert to grants, should not be forgivable. Let the Catholics repay the loans with interest.
diegoholiveira 6y ago
I saw a lot of people saying things like "tax them". Why would you tax a non-profit institution that has like 5K hospitals and more than 10K homes for the elderly, orphans and those with special needs?
- klyrs 6y ago
  Because they exert, and lobby for, the right to refuse treatment on religious grounds. Women's reproductive rights, and LGBTQ people are harmed where tax dollars are redirected through "charity" and cannot be used to establish secular services of the same kind. They're great for the "right kind" of elderly, homeless and orphans. But they've got a long history of screwing everybody else over, for example, forced conversion of native american orphans. Essentially, it's a loophole that you can pilot a "separate but equal" aircraft carrier through. And then fail to even provide that "separate" care, so equality is not achieved.
  - diegoholiveira 6y ago
    You're saying: they not perfect. And I agree with you. But who's perfect?
    - klyrs 6y ago
      Who said anything about perfection? I'm saying tax dollars would be better spent providing services to all citizens, not just those whose lives conform to a particular religion's norms. And thus we should tax churches for a percentage of their tithe. And maybe not shovel money on them just because they asked with cash.
sparrish 6y ago
The government shut its doors involuntarily - essentially blocking the revenue (donations) received. The government should have to provide compensation for 'taking away' the ability to minister to people and receive donations, according to the 5th amendment of the Constitution.

69 points by js2 6y ago

It's a business, like any other--it just sells something that cannot be redeemed until after death. Let's pull back tax benefits for religious institutions and treat them the same as the rest.

bilekas 6y ago
It's not just like any other though, it already recieves huge tax relief. Not to mention the esitmated worth in 2018 at least was 30 Billion $ > The Internal Revenue Service automatically considers churches exempt. The reasoning behind making churches tax-exempt and unburdened by IRS procedures stems from a First Amendment-based concern to prevent government involvement with religion. So it's okay not to pay taxes, but it can petition to recieve some. Doesn't add up.
- abetusk 6y ago
  This is some contorted logic. "We will not privilege religion, so we will give a privileged tax exempt status to religion". Ha, nice, the Satanic Temple is also tax exempt [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple
  - klyrs 6y ago
    I've been thinking a lot about the Satanic Temple recently. The supreme court has been ferociously eroding the separation of church and state lately. I wonder how they, and the public, would respond to public funding for a Satanic charter school that openly discriminated against heterosexual teachers and forced heterosexual students to undergo gay conversion therapy... Edit: to be clear, I don't think that it would be a good to do. But for all the fearmongering about the "gay agenda" to make your kids gay, there's a well-documented "straight agenda" that results in a high rate of suicide (and very few enduring conversions) of its victims. If we are equal in the eyes of the law, zero or both must be valid.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      I’m not against a gay only school. It doesn’t sound too dissimilar to male or female only schools, which only seek to employ teachers of the same gender.
- 29_29 6y ago
  They aren't given tax relief. They aren't paying the thief like the rest of us.
  - jt94mf90d 6y ago
    how would society work if the vast majority of working people dont contribute to maintence?
    - User23 6y ago
      Evidently it works just fine since the bottom 60% of the population runs a surplus against the government since at least 2012[1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-...
    - 29_29 6y ago
      maintenance is one thing. We have an empire, welfare state, huge entitlements and red ink of pension obligations as far as the eye can see. As soon as people fail, they look to the government to bail them out.
- peterxpark 6y ago
  By that logic non-profits also should not have qualified to receive relief funds since the 501c3s don't pay taxes either but do serve a social good.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  US churches have some exceptions related to religion freedom, but otherwise they are conventional non-profit corporations.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

It’s not a monolithic financial institution in the U.S. It’s a large array of individually operating entities providing local food banks etc.

valuearb 6y ago
It's a long running MLM selling "eternal salvation" and spending a tiny percentage of it's revenues on charity for PR cover.
- rbecker 6y ago
  While not given as a percentage of revenue, this post estimates the Catholic Church's charity as anything but 'tiny': https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/6ogy4p/source_for_the_church_being_the_largest/dkhrydq/?st=1Z141Z3&sh=d663c0a2 https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/6ogy4p/source_...
  - exclusiv 6y ago
    People also forget the huge network of Catholics who contribute their own personal time for the benefit of the local communities (and also the non-Catholics they activate with their local events). It would be hard to quantify, but in the analysis you posted that's not included.

12xo 6y ago

Tax them.

danso 6y ago

The news peg for this particular story (i.e. why the Catholic Church and not all denominations) is ostensibly the Church's ongoing legal battle and settlements re: clergy sexual abuse, but also the fact that the church's lobbying arm successfully argued an exception for religious organizations to not be disqualified under the rule's dictate "that only businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including at all subsidiaries, are eligible.": > The Catholic News Service reported that the bishops’ conference and several major Catholic nonprofit agencies worked throughout the week of March 30 to ensure that the “unique nature of the entities would not make them ineligible for the program” because of how SBA defines a “small” business. Those conversations came just days after President Trump signed the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which included the Paycheck Protection Program. > In addition, federal records show the Los Angeles archdiocese, whose leader heads the bishops’ conference, paid $20,000 to lobby the U.S. Senate and House on “eligibility for non-profits” under the CARES Act. The records also show that Catholic Charities USA, a social service arm of the church with member agencies in dioceses across the country, paid another $30,000 to lobby on the act and other issues. Also, the Catholic Church is just fundamentally a more hierarchical and unified institution compared to other denominations. Sure, other denominations have dioceses and bishops, but not as rigidly structured as Catholicism, e.g. cardinals who work directly with the Pope.

voisin 6y ago
$50k in lobbying for $1.4B (possibly $3.5B)? Seems like a hell of a ROI. I’ve never understood why elected officials seem willing to acquiesce to huge pork barrel projects for such little $$ in lobbying. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Lobbying Dollars”?
- exclusiv 6y ago
  Yeah it's crazy but I think the short answer is - they aren't giving up their money.
  - voisin 6y ago
    In a competitive market, wouldn’t you expect the costs and benefits to converge?

mnm1 6y ago

I'm not surprised they made an exception to allow the church to gain funds despite having more than 500 employees but did not require companies with more than 500 employees to provide sick leave for corona. Classic corruption. Send the funds to our rich rapist (proven not alleged in this case) friends while Americans are starving and getting evicted in the streets while sick because they have no sick days or financial support. Many people are still waiting for their first unemployment check from March but not to worry, the church won't go out of business and little kids will continue to be raped by priests. We have our priorities straight in America. Clearly raping kids is more important than feeding, sheltering, or providing sick leave for ordinary Americans. Message received loud and clear.

_--___-___ 6y ago
www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf Employees of the US public school system abuse several orders of magnitude more children than the global Catholic clergy. Maybe I shouldn't be taxed to pay the rapist employees of a system my family and I don't benefit from before we start talking about the churches.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

I want to avoid taxes but also get government support too. Who do I need to lobby and how much will it take?

sushid 6y ago
First, create a religion.
- annoyingnoob 6y ago
  I find the L Ron Hubbard path distasteful. But I see your point. I suppose any non-profit could work instead.
- felideon 6y ago
  It's easier than that. Pretty much anyone with charisma and public speaking skills can start a non-denominational "Christian" church.
missedthecue 6y ago
Start any charity?

noscrewstoyous 6y ago

Well, time to tax.

jawns 6y ago

I'm a Catholic, and although I believe in my church's doctrine, I don't always come to the defense of my church's leaders. Here's how I see this: Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that when public funds (e.g. grants, aid, forgivable loans) are made generally available to any organization that meets certain neutral criteria, a religious organization that meets the criteria cannot be excluded merely because it is religious. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires the government to be impartial when it comes to religion, showing no preference toward any particular faith, or toward religious believers in general. But that doesn't mean that religious organizations must be barred from funding that is otherwise generally available. So, assuming the Catholic parishes, dioceses, and organizations satisfied same the criteria for the PPP loans as everybody else, I don't think there's a "separation of church and state" issue here. Another consideration: What happens if they were ineligible to participate in the PPP. They would likely be forced to furlough or lay off employees. Because churches don't pay into states' unemployment programs, those employees would not be eligible to collect unemployment insurance (or the federal government's additional unemployment aid), which would put them in pretty bad shape. I happen to think that churches SHOULD pay into unemployment programs or provide similar unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, but that's not the reality right now. And so having churches participate in the PPP is an available way for the government to look after people who happen to work for religious employers. As for some of the more controversial details -- lobbying for special classification with regard to employee size restrictions -- I would not be surprised if the Church were in the wrong there, although it's certainly true that the Church has an organizational structure that far predates and doesn't map cleanly to U.S. corporate structures.

annoyingnoob 6y ago
The issue that I have is that the Catholic Church has enormous assets, something like 30 billion in net worth globally. I'm feeling like the church had options beyond lobbying for relief.
- jawns 6y ago
  Those assets are, in large part, the church buildings themselves. They are not liquid assets. Indeed, they are even more illiquid than most other real estate, because the market for church buildings, all of which are constructed to meet the needs and functions of a particular faith, is quite limited. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the Catholic Church has vast piles of money sitting around in a Scrooge McDuck-style money bin. Whereas if you look at the balance sheets of your average Catholic parish or diocese, you'll see that their budgets are relatively modest, they sometimes operate in the red, and to the extent that they have liquid assets, they're generally set aside to fulfill pension obligations. Even at the Vatican level, the annual operating budget is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized U.S. city, and expenses tend to be fairly close to income. The art in its museums is often mistakenly viewed as if it could be sold off like gold or diamonds, but the Vatican actually acts more as a conservator than an owner of the pieces. It does not consider itself at liberty to sell the art, because it was entrusted to the Vatican's care under the expectation that it would be perpetually maintained. In that sense, the art truly is priceless; it can't be sold.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

In this case maybe the loans should not convert to grants, should not be forgivable. Let the Catholics repay the loans with interest.

diegoholiveira 6y ago

I saw a lot of people saying things like "tax them". Why would you tax a non-profit institution that has like 5K hospitals and more than 10K homes for the elderly, orphans and those with special needs?

klyrs 6y ago
Because they exert, and lobby for, the right to refuse treatment on religious grounds. Women's reproductive rights, and LGBTQ people are harmed where tax dollars are redirected through "charity" and cannot be used to establish secular services of the same kind. They're great for the "right kind" of elderly, homeless and orphans. But they've got a long history of screwing everybody else over, for example, forced conversion of native american orphans. Essentially, it's a loophole that you can pilot a "separate but equal" aircraft carrier through. And then fail to even provide that "separate" care, so equality is not achieved.
- diegoholiveira 6y ago
  You're saying: they not perfect. And I agree with you. But who's perfect?
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Who said anything about perfection? I'm saying tax dollars would be better spent providing services to all citizens, not just those whose lives conform to a particular religion's norms. And thus we should tax churches for a percentage of their tithe. And maybe not shovel money on them just because they asked with cash.

sparrish 6y ago

The government shut its doors involuntarily - essentially blocking the revenue (donations) received. The government should have to provide compensation for 'taking away' the ability to minister to people and receive donations, according to the 5th amendment of the Constitution.